In recent years, with the advancement of technology, medical image diagnosis apparatuses and systems using various electronic instruments have been installed in medical institutions. A medical image diagnosis apparatus is an apparatus which creates a medical image by collecting information on the inside of a subject and imaging the inside of the subject based on this collected information. Examples of such a medical image diagnosis apparatus include an X-ray computed tomography (CT) apparatus and a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus.
Systems in the medical field have become diverse. When a user such as a radiographer or a radiologist in a hospital diagnoses the clinical condition of a patient by radiologically interpreting three-dimensional images captured with an X-ray CT apparatus or a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, the user does such work by using applications of a plurality of systems such as a 2D viewer or a 3D viewer which performs volume rendering or three-dimensional maximum intensity projection (MIP) process, and clinical analysis application aimed at analyzing a particular body part or a particular illness.
Here, depending on the purpose of observation, the user sometimes changes the applications to be used and also the arrangements of medical images and reports on the monitors, and then compares these medical images, reports, or the like to perform radiological interpretation. In the case of radiological interpretation using a plurality of applications, the user starts a plurality of applications in accordance with the modality, the body part, and the purpose of the radiological interpretation, operates an input device such as a mouse to manually arrange a plurality of pieces of medical information (e.g. medical images or reports) created respectively by the applications to optimal, easily-viewable position positions, and then performs the radiological interpretation.
Note that it takes time for the user to manually change the display arrangement of each piece of medical information as described above, and the efficiency of radiological interpretation is therefore lowered. For example, assume that the user simultaneously starts a plurality of applications at the start of radiological interpretation. In this case, since the applications differ from each other in start time, the user needs to start all the applications and identify pieces of medical information created respectively by these applications in order to arrange the piece of medical information created respectively by each application to an optimal position. Thus, the user cannot perform radiological interpretation until all the applications are started and also until he or she finishes changing the arrangement of each piece of medical information. Accordingly, the efficiency of radiological interpretation is significantly lowered.